An access point (AP) may provide networking capabilities to user equipment (UEs) connected thereto. The use of wireless devices in commercial and residential environments is rapidly increasing and, accordingly, there is increased consumer expectation that communication using such wireless devices is of high, un-interrupted, quality. Due to the wireless nature of the devices, which are commonly portable, there may be a desire to have such communication ideally seamless as the wireless devices are moved within a particular environment, such as residential building or an office. For example, in a residential dwelling, a tablet device might be moved from a room close to an access point on the ground floor, to a room upstairs in the residential dwelling, remote from the access point to a wireless network. To increase the coverage area provided to the UEs, a plurality of APs may be linked together to form a local access network (LAN) such that different ones of the APs service different areas to extend the coverage area of the network. The plurality of APs may be connected using various network topologies. These topologies may be divided into infrastructure networks and ad-hoc networks. In ad-hoc networks, the APs may not be supported by centralized infrastructure, but rather communicate directly with other APs in the network.
Mesh networks are a type of ad-hoc network topology in which the APs cooperate to distribute data within the network. The data may be distributed from a source AP to a destination AP using routing techniques which propagate the data along a path by hopping from node-to-node until the destination is reached. A source UE, wishing to send data to a destination UE, may send the data to its associated source AP and the data may propagate over the mesh network between interfaces that interconnect various APs between the source AP and a destination AP associated with the destination UE.
A problem may arise from the use of a wireless network system is that, when a wireless network client device associates with a particular access point, and then is subsequently moved within the network environment, the signal strength between the client device and associated access point may decrease, thereby affecting connectivity and data transmission. Such a decrease in signal strength may be particularly noticeable in systems employing relatively short range communication techniques, such as WiFi® or Bluetooth®.
Additionally, a single poor link may result in overall decreased capacity of the network. To address the problem of a client device remaining linked to a particular AP, the wireless connection of the client device may be temporarily turned off and then turned back on when the client device is in the new location. This commonly results in the client device scanning and selecting the most appropriate access point with which it should connect, based on its location. Alternatively, manual selection of the appropriate link may be made from a list of available options using the client device. This operation may also be performed automatically, for example the client device may be configured to roam for, and connect to, the best immediate connection, for example the access point with which it most strongly associates, and therefore with which it has the highest immediate data rate connection. However, the act of roaming to switch between different access points causes interruptions to the connectivity. Further, the highest immediate data rate connection may be a strong link in an otherwise weak chain and therefore by connecting with the most immediately strong link does not guarantee that overall end-to-end connectivity is improved between end points of data transfer.
Therefore, the quality of the data transmission in a wireless network may not be as high as expected since the user of the device may not perform the manual operation when needed and/or may select a less than optimal pathway.